There are numerous types of consumer-operated vending and service machines in use today, including food and drink vending machines, coin counting kiosks, DVD rental kiosks, etc. Various embodiments of consumer-operated kiosks are disclosed in, for example: U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,620,079, 6,494,776, 7,584,869, 7,653,599, 7,748,619, 7,815,071, and 7,865,432; and U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 12/758,677, 12/806,531, 61/364,360 and 61/409,050; each of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
Many consumer-operated kiosks, vending machines, and other commercial sales/service/rental machines include a sturdy housing or enclosure that protects inventory, money, and/or internal workings from unauthorized access or theft. Service personnel, however, must be able to access such machines to restock inventory or consumables, remove money, perform maintenance and repairs, and perform other functions. For this reason, most kiosks include a lockable access door that requires a service personnel key to open. In addition, some doors can include a mechanical switch for recording door opening and closing times. These times can be compared to service personnel logs to ensure that only authorized personnel had access to the machine at all times.
One downside of mechanical door switches, however, is that they can often be easily bypassed or otherwise disabled without detection. Even some magnetic switches can be relatively easy to compromise with an appropriately-placed refrigerator magnet. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a relatively simple access monitoring system that could not be easily defeated.